Bring Your Own Bowl
Dex thinks a coded seed catalog will lead three hungry travelers to endless food. The message promises something smaller, and a broker wants to keep it secret.
Post-collapse adventure mystery
Read the story →Self-Reliance · Fiction
Self-Reliance stories
Fiction about making do, sharing resources, and making hard choices together.
Downhill Is Not Home
Dorik and his sister take the wrong trail. He wants to keep going; she wants them both to reach home.
Wilderness family drama
Read the story →Eat the Thunder
Nessa visits three islands in search of a meal her sister cannot beat. The food is marvelous. Nessa is rather less quiet.
Comic fantasy travel
Read the story →Forty Seeds Across the Salt
A young explorer, a stubborn scientist, and three rebel fae cross the salt flats for the last forest’s seeds.
Fantasy adventure
Read the story →Four Notes for the Flood
Tavi knows a tune that can set the valley right. Four stubborn voices have to answer.
Fae journey fiction
Read the story →Nobody Gets the Balcony
Savri can win the mayor's backing for a storm shelter, if she can stop thinking about the speech she wants to give.
Political fiction
Read the story →Something Crossed the Car Park
A landowner’s blurry Sasquatch film puts his building plans at risk and gives his daughter a question he would rather avoid.
Civic speculative suspense
Read the story →Tell Me Your Name
Drus wants to travel north alone. A boy at an empty coach stop needs to go the other way.
Post-collapse journey fiction
Read the story →Thirty Days Below
A father who prepared a shelter for his family must face the limits of what he can promise them.
Family survival short fiction
Read the story →We Vote after Supper
Sevrin has cooked for the settlement’s first election. Its founder would rather keep everyone waiting.
Post-disaster community fiction
Read the story →When the Mountain Stood Up
Belem tells a visitor why her old ferry is stranded far above the river.
Giant-country witness tale
Read the story →The Basket Beside the Door
A woman who posts cheerful messages from home has trouble asking for one small, useful delivery.
Contemporary fiction
Read the story →A Second Cup at the Spring
Hesta has crossed the desert to stop growing old. The guardian of the spring would very much like her to have another drink.
Desert fantasy
Read the story →Lightning Lou at Half Past Twelve
The fastest gun in Button Creek has a noon appointment with someone who has actually seen his act.
Comic narrative ballad
Read the story →The Extra Chair
Viv's weekly supper always has room for one more person. On the evening before Len leaves, the room and the welcome need renegotiating.
Neighborhood comedy
Read the story →The Fourth Dragon of Dry Bend
A wagon cook remembers the morning a prophesied hero joined the flour convoy—and the dragon joined him.
Frontier fantasy tall tale
Read the story →The Friday Shift
A laundry supervisor promises a difficult delivery, then has to find a plan her workers can actually choose to carry out.
Contemporary short fiction
Read the story →The Incredible Exploits of Captain Calamity
Cal's preparations for a dignified rodeo performance become a nuisance, then an unexpectedly useful morning's practice.
Physical-comedy narrative poem
Read the story →The Names under the Bridge
Two rival envoys have one morning to renew a river treaty. The bridge remembers a clause both governments have forgotten.
Diplomatic fantasy
Read the story →The Quilt That Would Not Lie Flat
A seamstress accepts work from a town of ghosts. Their funniest memory has developed a troublesome lump.
Whimsical ghost story
Read the story →The Three Stops on Cedar Street
A delayed bus, a failing grocery refrigerator and a fragile clay bird cross paths on one rainy morning.
Linked stories
Read the story →The White Places Between
Three travelers cross a pale quarry toward a promised sanctuary, carrying one lamp and voices they can no longer trust.
Supernatural survival horror
Read the story →What the Ravine Kept
A hired hunter follows a missing man's rifle into the woods. Something there knows how to make it sound as though he is still alive.
Frontier horror
Read the story →Where the Rope Came Back
A famous climber presses toward an unclimbed summit while his son tries to bring home something other than his father's reputation.
Mountain adventure
Read the story →Six Rooms and a Stair
In the fourth year after the collapse, a settlement keeps a record of the house it means to build—and the promises it cannot keep.
Post-apocalyptic fiction
Read the story →The Long Way to Still Water
A ferry turned floating home loses its bridge steering, leaving its skipper a narrow repair dock and a much longer way to shelter.
Sea survival fiction
Read the story →Laundry from the Other Side
A washhouse from another world appears in Tamsin's apartment building, carrying the suit her brother wore when he disappeared.
Fantasy
Read the story →The Spare Sun
A star nursery's apprentice sells what looks like surplus stock. By morning, the rest of the orchard has begun to wake.
Fantasy
Read the story →Abundance on Cardboard
When a community garden runs out of water, its most cheerful member has to learn what thanks can and cannot fix.
Contemporary fiction
Read the story →The Apocalypse Has a Craft Table
A stockroom clerk enters a televised survival game to win supplies for a real pantry. The set is fake; the prize is not.
Comic near-future satire
Read the story →The Consultant from the Tree Line
A town planner keeps finding better road plans in stolen traffic cones, and the person drawing them has very large feet.
Comic fantasy
Read the story →The Last Good Frequency
A radio host has one afternoon to redirect a scattered market before her station's generator goes to the grain mill.
Post-apocalyptic fiction
Read the story →The Mole Who Was Almost Expected
A misread prophecy puts an ordinary tunnel clerk in charge of a flood. He has a map, rising water, and no talent for being chosen.
Comic animal fantasy
Read the story →The Overdue Book
A travelling librarian follows a missing repair manual across two quarrelling settlements, with a flood, a secret reader, and a sack of flour at stake.
Post-collapse adventure
Read the story →The Road with the Borrowed Signpost
A courier follows a rain only road to deliver a bell rope, then finds the signpost has walked off with a school party.
Comic fantasy
Read the story →The Tin at the Gate
During a winter grid failure, three strangers return a medicine tin to a secluded settlement and ask to stay the night.
Survival drama
Read the story →Discussion
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